


we keep you in our bones

by honey_wheeler



Series: home is just another word for you [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, M/M, Marriage, Oral Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:21:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A wild stipple of freckles spreads over the curve of her shoulder. It invites his touch as surely as if she'd placed his hand there herself, and his fingers curl over bone and muscle, sliding across the satin of her skin. It feels curiously intimate and he wonders if he should take his hand away. He has to laugh at his hesitation; he’d been inside her only moments ago, but it’s this that makes him worry that he’s taking untoward liberties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we keep you in our bones

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ADwD, spoilers abound. From the **[got_exchange prompt:](http://gotexchange-mod.livejournal.com/829.html?thread=110653#t110653)** Jon Snow/Jeyne Westerling(/Robb Stark) - post-series - tell me we both matter, don't we?

It's a common enough thing. The history of Westeros is full of men who married the betrothed of a deceased brother. Jon’s own father was one of them. But it had always seemed strange to Jon, a woman passed about like chattel, like livestock needing to be kept, regardless of the keeper. And he doesn’t imagine anyone ever intended it to apply to bastard brothers anyway.

Nonetheless, he’s to marry Jeyne Westerling. He’s been told the reasons: alliances, protection. Currying favor, cultivating relationships, reasons prudent and politic. Things that mean nothing to Jon now. But they’d told him that Robb had named him heir before his death, and that does mean something to him, so he agrees to take his brother’s wife for his own. His obligation to the Night’s Watch died with him the day he was betrayed, the day Satin and Pyp and Grenn saved him, hid him and bandaged him and bid him flee through the Gift as a man thought dead and buried. He’s Lord Commander no longer. She is Queen of nothing and no one. They’ve lived and loved and lost – oh, how they’ve both lost – so it makes a poetic sort of sense.

The first time he meets her is on their wedding day. He’s imagined her, often, this girl who became Robb’s wife. She’s not quite as pretty as he’d expected. Shyer. Younger. But then, the-girl-Robb-would-marry was never more than an abstract concept in Jon’s mind, some piece of the far-off future, the wife of a far-off Robb, someone other than Jon’s Robb, so perhaps it’s not surprising that she’s not what he expected. She’s an actual person, after all. She exists.

The cloak he fastens about her shoulders is crow-black rather than grey and white. Robb’s heir or no, it’s still difficult to think himself a Stark. She doesn’t seem to mind.

It’s a subdued affair. The thick of winter leaves little room for merriment, and Winterfell is still recovering from its poor care by those Jon would have liked to have killed with his bare hands, and still wishes he had, the passing of years having done nothing to blunt the edge of that particular desire: Greyjoy, Bolton and his bastard. Stannis Baratheon may have been difficult, he might have brought Jon more trouble than aid, but Jon would always be in debt to the man for bringing Roose Bolton to justice. At the feast, Jon had apologized to Jeyne for the modest provisions, for the disrepair and depletion of her new home. He hadn’t mentioned Bolton by name, but he hadn’t needed to. Even an indirect mention made her face close up like a flower. Jon remembers how it first felt, when he’d finally made his way back to Winterfell, to know the man who’d slain his brother had been here, had walked these floors and halls. Time has dulled the ache somewhat, but he doesn’t think it could ever erase it.

When it comes time for the bedding, the assembled guests hold back. Jon had steadfastly refused to allow them the usual raucousness. With all the roughness she’s known, he’s determined that Jeyne’s life here should be gentle, that she should never feel anything but safe with him. Instead he offers her his arm, walks them to his chambers under their own power. He doesn’t intend to bed her, but he’s already denied the guests their sport. Letting the marriage seem unconsummated would serve no one. It’s yet another half-truth in a life growing over-filled with him, but Jon’s resigned himself to such realities, the sort he never could have imagined accepting as the boy who had lived here with his brothers and sisters, when he still believed his life then was difficult.

He'd chosen Lady Stark's chambers as his own. In his other life, they would have been too warm for him. But that was before cold lived in his bones, before he felt he could spit ice. Ghost seems to feel the same. He’s there when they come in, lying so close to the fire that his fur is singed in places, a ragged brown edge marring the snowy white. Jon stands for a moment to let the heat seep in, half thinking he might begin to steam as the cold of the Wall, still so deeply embedded, melts and runs out through his pores. Jeyne hovers uncertainly just over the threshold. He closes the door behind her, shutting out the talk and laughter of the guests.

“My lady,” Jon says, inclining his head at her. At his wife. It’s a strange feeling. Her face holds something close to a smile. “I hope everything is to your liking.”

She nods, shyly. “You’ve been most kind.”

At the sound of her voice, Ghost rouses himself, stretching and yawning hugely before trotting over to investigate. He bumps his head against Jon’s thigh, then approaches Jeyne, eyes alert and curious. She holds a careful hand out for Ghost to sniff. Jon slips far more easily into Ghost’s skin now, sometimes without even meaning to, and he realizes he’s done just that when Jeyne’s scent flares up keen and sharp in his nose, far sharper than any human sense could manage.

"I was always afraid of Robb's direwolf," she says, quietly, as if the mere mention of Robb's name will cause something delicate to shatter. It’s the first either of them has spoken of him. Ghost permits her to lay a hand atop his head, to scratch behind one ear in a gesture that echoes through Jon's own body and makes the hair at his nape bristle in pleasure.

"But you're not afraid of Ghost?" he asks. She stares down at her hand on Ghost's ruff, her skin looking darker against his snowy fur. Then she looks up and fixes Jon with eyes too old.

"I've learned there are far better things to be frightened of," she says. Jon only nods. He’s learned that lesson as well.

“You barely ate at the feast,” he says, when Ghost’s curiosity has been sated. There’s a platter of fruits at the table in his solar – meager fruits, to be sure, but fruits nonetheless – and he gestures for her to sit. When she hesitates, he nudges the plate towards her, fills a glass with wine from the skin beside it. “Please.” She nibbles at a piece of fruit as if to make it last a century. He knows the feeling.

“Strange, isn’t it,” he says, the words hanging awkwardly in the air between them. “To be wed when we don't know each other. When we've never even met.” She smiles at him, the first real smile he’s seen from her. It transforms her face, makes her look softer, sweeter.

"I knew you before I ever met you, Jon Snow.” Her words make his chest tighten like a fist. Jon had wondered if Robb spoke of him, if he’d told his young wife about their time together at Winterfell. The gladness at knowing he did is tempered by the curious pain Jon feels at knowing there was a time in Robb’s life without him. That Jeyne had a piece of him Jon never knew, the very last piece of him. Jon tells himself not to be jealous. He had Robb for years, after all. But not long enough, for all that. Not nearly long enough.

They drink too much, their talk is falsely bright and overly loud. It must needs be, to be heard over the roar of the past, to drown out former sadnesses and current regrets. Her eyes grow dark and glassy from wine, and she tilts a bit to the side, like gravity is tightening its grip on her and she might slide onto the floor altogether. When he helps her to her feet that they might sleep, she clings fiercely to his hands, searches his face as if looking for someone else.

“I can make up a pallet on the floor,” Jon tells her, guiding her into the bedchamber and pointing to the linens and furs he’d set aside earlier, wanting her to be at ease. There'd been no bed left in these rooms when Jon had first come - just as well, as he doesn't think he could have brought himself to sleep in it anyway. The new bed is rough-hewn, with little elegance, but it serves. Ghost is curled atop the furs, having abandoned his place at the fire, and Jeyne stops at the sight of him, the tension of her grip on Jon’s arm pulling him to a halt as well.

"Ghost," she whispers, staring at the wolf. "There were ghosts in my first marriage bed. Ghosts of brothers dead.” She laughs, a small, sad sound, and Jon feels more helpless than he has in a long time.

"Jeyne..."

"Give me another ghost," she says, and then her mouth is on his, breathing in his exhalations as if they're all that could save her. Her lips are soft and dry and heartbreaking. Have they touched any others since Robb’s? The idea is like a splinter under Jon’s skin. It's been years, it's been _years_ since Robb died; Jon can't taste him on her tongue no matter how it seems he can. His mouth is too rough, his hands in her hair are too tight, but she makes no complaint. She only shivers, until he lifts her up against him to slide his boots beneath her stockinged feet, between them and the stone floor.

"Kiss me the way you kissed him," she breathes into his mouth, and he knows a moment of terror, sheer panic at being caught out in his deepest secret. But it seems right that she should know, that they should share such a desire between them, and he does as bid, kissing her like to consume her, intensely aware that this is the closest he's been to Robb since they parted, the closest he’ll ever be again. Robb whom he loved. Robb whose secrets he kept. 

He walks her easily towards the rough stone wall, lifting each of her feet on his, her slight body not even especially heavy for him. The wine is sweet on her tongue, on her teeth and lips, and he drinks it from her mouth, thinking of Robb, of Ygritte, of how he’d never thought to have such a thing again in his life. The long absence of it has him burning and aching; his body is an arrow, notched and drawn, ready to be loosed. Even through layers of cloth and leather, he can feel her softness, her warmth, and he sinks into it, he wants and wants and wants. Fumbling a hand beneath her skirts, he seeks out the bare band of skin between hose and smallclothes, runs his fingertips all the way around to touch every inch of it.

“Jon,” she tells him, her toes curling over the leather of his boots, and he knows just what she means, knows everything she wants. “Jon, please.”

He kneels before her, takes up her skirts in careful hands, showing her calves and knees and thighs an inch at a time. Helpfully, she gathers the fabric in her hands when it reaches her waist, watches him with glittering eyes as he takes in the generous spread of her hips, the stretch of skin between linen and wool that he’d already memorized with his fingertips. An urge overtakes him and he leans forward to bite at that skin, his teeth leaving faint crescent marks behind to pink and then fade. Her smallclothes sit loose at her waist. They slide down easily at his tug, slipping over the wool of her hose to puddle at her feet before she kicks them aside. 

Her hose are tied with pale pink ribbons that he toys with, tugging lightly at the tails of the bows before deciding to leave them tied. He likes how it looks, her skirts bunched in her fists at her waist, showing tawny skin and wisping brown curls and shadows above the rough-spun wool. He breathes in the scent of her, slides both palms up her thighs until his thumbs come together at the top to touch her until she trembles. Until her knees start to buckle and he stands to catch her, to push her against the wall and hitch her thighs about him, feeling the heat of her even through his breeches. She’s wet against the back of his hand when he fumbles between them to untie the laces. With a mewling sound, she rubs down on his knuckles, making him forget how to untie the knot, forget what he’s doing, forget his own name.

He thinks of Ygritte when he pushes into her, but only a little. He thinks of Robb when she bites his neck, and that more than a little. He thinks of her when he spills inside her – of Jeyne, of his wife – afterwards dipping his hand low to seek and press and circle, swallowing her cries with his mouth when she finds completion, and it’s good. It’s different. But it’s good.

He holds her against the wall until they stop quivering, until their bodies cool and their pulses slow. Her skirts rustle around him when he pulls back, lowering her feet to the ground with a careful hand hooked under each thigh. Jon turns away, tucks himself into his breeches and rights his clothing until he’s at least somewhat proper. When he turns back, she’s looking at him intently, almost tenderly, and he finds himself at a loss for what to say.

“I’ll…” he starts, gesturing to the pallet he’d laid out before, but she splays a hand on his chest over the jerkin he still wears and pushes him to sit on the bed, Ghost huffing impatiently at his intrusion and jumping down to seek out the fire again.

“Are we not wed?” she asks. She turns, presents him with her back. For a moment he’s confused, until he realizes she means for him to unlace the bodice of her gown. The gesture is so familiar – so very much like a real marriage – that he catches his breath at it and pulls at her laces with unsteady hands.

“We are,” he says when he trusts his voice, “but you don’t have to-”

“That’s sweet,” she tells him, stepping away to tug her gown over her head, “but unnecessary.” Firelight glows through her thin shift, outlining each limb and curve, and he swallows against it, feels himself stirring and beginning to grow hard again. It’s been too long. It’s been far too long.

She’s gentle as she eases his jerkin over his head and along his obediently raised arms. It’s folded carefully, set atop the chair at the bedside. He’s distracted by the tender hand she runs along the leather, the almost fond way she touches the seams, so that he’s surprised to find her kneeling before him and taking one boot in hand to pull at the laces.

There’s something unexpectedly lovely about her. A wild stipple of freckles spreads over the curve of her shoulder. It invites his touch as surely as if she'd placed his hand there herself, and his fingers curl over bone and muscle, sliding across the satin of her skin. It feels curiously intimate and he wonders if he should take his hand away. He has to laugh at his hesitation; he’d been inside her only moments ago, but it’s this that makes him worry that he’s taking untoward liberties. But she leans into his touch, tugs his left boot off and wraps one soft hand around his instep. Another curiously intimate gesture. He watches his hand reach as if it belongs to someone else, catching some of the shining fall of her hair. It’s brown and rich, bright over his knuckles in the firelight. He wraps it around his palm – once, then twice – and makes a fist, pulls her a fraction closer until she looks up, his boots dropped to the floor at her side.

She's still kneeling before him; it arouses and discomfits him in equal measure. He wants to pull her to her feet, to bear her to the floor beneath him. He wants to taste the crook of her elbow and feel the beat of her heart in shadowed places. Instead he rubs his thumb over the silk of her hair, holds still as she pushes his tunic up at his waist, the laces and buckles he’d only put partially back in order dissolving under her fingers until she can tug his breeches down past his smallclothes aided by the cant of his hips, his shirt following in short order once she stands. She peels him like fruit, like the sweet oranges he hasn't had since he was young, another boy in another life.

The mattress gives under his shoulders when she pushes him back upon it, shoving at his knees until he lies down fully, clad only in his smallclothes. Her eyes trace over his body. A brief surge of self-consciousness bubbles up within him at his scars, some still new enough to be red and puckered over the spidery white lines of the old. But she drifts the back of one hand over them, her eyes soft and kind, and any ill feelings fade away. Jon catches her fingers. Holds them to his lips.

“My wife,” he says, lips quirking in wry bemusement that such words are his to say.

“My husband,” she says, her tone matching his. There’s something absurd about it. Jon has to fight the urge to giggle like a child.

Her shift stretches and pulls, snagging at her knees when she climbs atop the mattress. Impatiently, she pulls it free, gathers it at her thighs as she straddles his bare chest. He can feel her wet against him and he sucks in a deep breath against it, against the violent need surging through him. He remembers this. He remembers this feeling, this all-consuming desire to touch and taste everything, to feel everything, a desire made all the more potent for being so intertwined now with sadness, with regret and longing – for Robb, for Ygritte, for a life that somehow seemed simpler despite its complications. But all those things are gone now. They’re phantoms. Jeyne, though. Jeyne is real. Jeyne is here.

Suddenly impatient for the taste of her, Jon snakes his arms beneath her thighs. His hands settle at the joints of her hips, where the flesh creases and bends, and he digs his fingers into the sweet yield of her, drags her up to his mouth, the pressure of his fingers on her hips opening her for his tongue. She gives a throaty whimper, surprised, and bucks against his mouth, her shift falling around him to shroud his face and make him feel there’s nothing else in the world. The sounds she’s making…gods, he’d forgotten how good this was, how heady it felt to make another person feel such things. Her fingers clutch in his hair through her shift, she twists and rocks almost violently, but he wants it, he needs it so desperately he could perish from it. He needs this one thing in the world to be good. At the tremor of her thighs around his ears, he sucks at her, gently, ruthlessly, until she falls apart above him, no name trembling from her lips at her release, only a wordless sound of pleasure keen as pain.

It’s her absence that wakes him in the night, after they’ve slept and fucked and slept again, the pillow beside him an empty hollow where she’d lain. For a moment he’s disoriented, not sure where he is before he recognizes the room, registers the air around him thick and warm like honey, like the blood moving hot and lazy through his veins. She’s standing before the window, bare, her hair a wild tangle down her back. Her lack of inhibition surprises him a bit. But then, he thinks, maybe everything she has to hide is on the inside. She doesn’t move at his approach, doesn’t flinch in surprise at his touch. He traces his hand over the muscles narrowing down her back, dips a fingertip into the twin divots at the base of her spine. 

“Jeyne,” he says quietly. He looks over her shoulder out the window, at the stars scattered like salt over the dark of the night sky. For a moment she doesn’t move, though he feels her skin shift in response to his touch. Freckles scatter across her shoulders just like the stars and he touches his fingers to them, numbers them until he loses count.

“Make me warm, Jon,” she says finally. “I don’t remember the last time I was warm.” She turns into his arms, lifting on her toes to kiss him, the heat of her mouth belying her words. Jon can’t help but think that he’s the last who could ever warm another. Still, he fits his hands about her ribs, slides his thumbs over the parchment-soft sides of her breasts, lets her double her arms around his head until he can see nothing but her face. Did Robb love her?, he wonders. Was their marriage more than duty? Jon doesn’t know what he’d like the answer to be. Jon doesn’t know anything anymore.

“Make me warm,” she whispers again. Her feet find his, her toes curled over his insteps as she kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, through the ghost that still lingers between them, no matter how close their bodies get.

 

_title from “It Won’t Be Long” by Corey Chisel and the Wandering Sons_

**Author's Note:**

> _Loosely continued in **[shine a light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/386506)**._


End file.
